House of Leaves & Space

I haven't been living up to my promise to write something new every day. Most days I haven't had much of an excuse. Lazyness mostly. Other than writing an essay this time last week I have been focusing my attention on deciphering the various puzzles in my life right now. Some personal, some superficial. Street Fighter 4 is a superficial time sink that has recently imposed itself on my life but I think after tonight I'll be spreading my time out a little more evenly amongst the things that are keeping me busy these days. It's really quite amazing just how much has happened in the past week, though it would probably be more accurate to say that I'm looking around with a greater appreciation of things I usually take for granted, if not ignore completely.

But that's a discussion for another day. Tonight I want to go over a few aspects of House of Leaves. I am still reading it, however infrequently I actually turn a few pages. Going into the book I was afraid that it would be needlessly complicated. I guess I was half right. It's complicated but obvious enough about explaining it's own complexity as you attempt to navigate it. The thing I have been really enjoying about it is that there's a fairly obvious parallel between the themes of the book and the way it presents them to you, that is, the paths it opens up that the reader can travel on. During this writing I'll be using a lot of the language of movement. If you've read the book you can probably see why. It has a lot to do with space and paths, both physical and mental. Before I go any further I should note that I'm still fairly early in the page count of the book, but this doesn't mean that I'm not well into the story. The book looks big, but in reality, the space it occupies is not what it seems. Many pages contain less than a paragraph. Others are packed with dense overlapped piles of words that are essentially dead ends.

House of Leaves is able to create a sense of space in another way, which is the thing I really wanted to discuss. If you try to read straight through the main text of the book you will miss everything, and then when there is no clear way forward you will be lost. At the onset it is a formatted and familiar document. There are parts of personal narrative from one editor, clearly separated from other parts that appear to be an academic paper, complete with footnotes. For most people this is a known quantity and likewise the subject of these parts is of the normal life of a family who have bought a new house. As the story progresses it is revealed that something is not quite right about the house. It is larger on the inside than the outside. As the essay portion of House of Leaves delves into the mystery of the house the familiar format we have become used to starts to fall apart. Lengthy sections of personal anecdotes divert us from the main body of the essay which itself often goes down bizarre paths. As a reader our attention is constantly redirected towards footnotes, appendices, sections that had been eliminated completely then brought back until eventually we find ourselves in a labyrinth of footnotes, some relevant, some not. You may chase a note down several pages only to find that at the end it references another note that starts on the same page but is printed upside down and goes back the way you came. There are footnote pits that lead to nowhere and show you the mirror image of the words as you "climb back" to your original page. Sometimes it will tell you to read an appendix, or direct you to the wrong note. Navigating this section of the book disorients you and you find a way to mark your place so you know where to return to if you get lost amongst the words.

Ordinarily this would be a mess but just prior to this maze you can find in footnotes printed in red with a strikethrough (denoting a piece deleted then recovered) that the author was discussing the myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinth. The main text of the section also discusses a maze.

It's getting late so I'll have to cut this short, but the point I'm trying to make is that it is amazing that Danielewski has managed to make me think of his words as representing a physical space and that it actually works well. I can only hope that this idea is a fertile ground for other parallels in his writing mechanics and content.

Street Fightin' Man | Gamers With Jobs

Street Fightin' Man | Gamers With Jobs

My adoration for GWJ notwithstanding this piece speaks with far more precision why I'm holding out on buying Street Fighter IV. I lack the arcade heritage that most fans of the series have but I know people that were and even spending evenings at their place squaring off against whoever is in the room has shown me the appeal of the fighting game genre. Unfortunately my living room will not be a place of gathering for the "World Warriors". I am quite content with being the incoming challenger in someone elses game right now. Time will have to tell if I want to step up to being a host myself.

Going to try to do another quick one tonight. I've been thinking all day about ways that some novels have experimented with storytelling techniques. Specifically I've been thinking about House of Leaves and The Dictionary of The Khazars. Both of these try to tell a story in a way that is totally different then the standard linear novel. I began to think about other ways we absorb stories and I came around to how we usually read content on the internet. Many online publications, blogs especially, mix content. A page that contains an article may have key words that link to outside content to complete or supplement the readers knowledge of the issue being addressed in the original piece. I should probably do some more research before going any further but this seems like an extremely interesting medium through which one could tell a full story that was unique to the readers reading habits, being as rich and deep as they choose to go in it.

I'll have to come back to this but I've been tossing it around in my head all night and I think it's got potential.

There isn't much to say right about now but I haven't written in a while and I wanted to make an effort to churn out some positive work so I'm forcing myself here at 12:30 to throw down some words. To be fair this is my magic hour. I do some of my best work in this "I should be in bed" period and as much as I WOULD rather be trying to sleep I'm holding myself hostage to the keyboard so I won't look back and regret time wasted.

All in all it's been a mixed few days. I've been doing some reading about psychological health and dealing with the ending of a relationship. A few times I've had to set aside all my reservations and embrace the self-help style, new-age, ultra-positive lingo that makes up the majority of self-help sources. I will grant that I am in pretty bad need of some advice and I'm not going to begrudge it a style of writing I'm not a fan of. My reading has led me to some effective coping techniques (including writing, hence all the content lately) and taking a few steps off the normal social channels. At this point I've only been getting bad news from Facebook and whatever else shows me every minutiae about my social circle's internet activity so I've opted to check it once or twice a day for less then a minute unless replying to a message. I'm calmer now, generally, and while some info that drags me down sifts through I haven't been flat out mad for a while. I've even found that most people I actually care about hearing from are much easier to come by then I thought. Hell, Facebook is probably responsible for me not seeing them that much due to their every action being broadcast all the time. It's hard to need to catch up to someone whose life is out there on a webpage being updated in real time.

So I've found some solace in that. My other source of distraction has been Battlestar Galactica. I simply didn't have enough time before to watch it and get everything else that needed to be done out of the way but I've got time aplenty now so I've been tearing through it. There are a lot of things I cringe whenever I see, especially since it comes so highly regarded, but then I'll catch a subtle bit imagery or they'll juxtapose the story or the characters in just the right way to open up a whole new facet that you didn't recognize before. All the same, the really interesting bits can be buried by random deus-ex machina or character motivations that fall out of the sky or waiting too long to add to narratives brought up episodes ago. Just nitpicks that occasionally inspire Lost-rage. It's been keeping me thinking and entertained and that is exactly what I need right now. I've even taken to exercising during the show.

Well now it's REALLY time to hit publish and turn in for the night. Maybe someday I'll have more discipline.

Edit: Also, this weekend is going to be a nightmare...